This study focuses on texts exploring human proclivity to violent behaviour. Building on the anthropological insights of René Girard, and on the premise that literature is a reflection of a cultural moment, Curyłło-Klag shows how early modernism registers symptoms of crisis which even the outbreak of World War I failed to resolve. Arranged in chronological order, the works of Conrad, Lewis and Lawrence reveal an unfolding pattern and form a triptych, indicative of the growing intensity of the epoch in which they were produced.
Izabela Curyłło-Klag teaches in the Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Her research interests include: the modern British novel, dystopian writing and roman noir, and the intersections between literature, history and culture. She has published articles on modernist fiction and co-edited an anthology of immigrant memoirs, The British Migrant Experience, 1700-2000.
Author(s): Izabela Curyłło-Klag
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 126
City: Kraków
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I.
Modernist Consciousness of Crisisand the Emer gent Violence Mythos
Modernism as Sacrificial Crisis
The Secret Agent, Tarr and Women in Love
Mimetic Rivalries and Con tagion of Violence
The Violence My thos of Modernism
Review of Critic al Approaches to Violence and Modernism
Chapter II. Ticking Towards Disaster—Violenceas “The Enemy Within” in Conrad’s The Secret Agent
England must be brought into line
Madness alone is truly terrifying
Blood alone puts a seal on greatness
She was not a submissiv e creature
Simple ferocity of the age of caverns
Chapter III. “All Personality Was Catching”—Mimetic Rivalryand the Con tagion of Violence in Tarr
Doomed, evidently
All in order for unbounded in flammation
A thirst for action
She had lain in wait for him
The bubonic plague
Not a duel but a brawl
Only a game, too
Chapter IV. Humanity in a Cul-de-sac: Women in Loveas an Epic of Sacrificial Crisis
An omen of universal dissolution
Mutual hellish recognition
A lurking desir e to have gizzard slit
Conclusion
Bibliography
Back cover
